With God on His Side

Published: March 30, 2003

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Bush has been very good at fooling the American people into thinking that Saddam Hussein was behind the attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington and that he is an ally and supplier of Al Qaeda, that eliminating him is the best way to keep terrorism from our shores. Whatever good reason there may be for ousting Saddam, those are not among them. The conviction that we might benefit by removing Saddam is not the same as believing that God wills it -- except in George Bush's mind. Those who oppose him are not, in his frame of thought, just making a political mistake. They are, as Ron Dreher's military chaplains believe, cutting ''to the core of one's belief in evil.'' Question the policy, and you no longer believe in evil -- which is the same, in this context, as not believing in God. That is the religious test on which our president is grading us.

In Madison's major statement on the relation of church to state, the ''Memorial and Remonstrance'' of 1785, Madison condemned the use of ''religion as an engine of civil policy.'' The results of this use are ''pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both superstition, bigotry, and persecution.'' Disestablishing religion, he argued, does not demote religion but protects it from exploitation by political authority, from ''an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.'' The separation of church and state, even though it is constantly being nibbled at, especially in time of war, has been important in keeping America the most religious country in the developed part of the world. As he put it, ''religion flourishes in greater purity without than with the aid of government.''

Madison wielded a pretty good pitchfork, even though religion keeps tumbling back in on us, especially in wartime. The result was measured by Mark Twain when Andrew Carnegie quoted the assertion that America is a Christian country: ''Why, Carnegie, so is hell . . . but we don't brag of this.'' Twain's tone deepened in bitterness as he watched America waging another of its pre-emptive wars, this one in the Philippines. He reminded us exactly what we are praying for when we ask God to take sides in war and accomplish the destruction of our foe. His ''War Prayer'' runs, in part:

''O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; . . . help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land. . . . We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love.''

Garry Wills is adjunct professor of history at Northwestern. His most recent book is ''Saint Augustine's Memory.''